More of the Truth

More of the truth refers to the central strategy of Classic Activism, which is what 100% of environmentalists and environmental activist organizations practice today. The four main steps of Classic Activism are:

1. Identify the problem to be solved.

2. Find the proper practices that, if adopted, would solve the problem.

3. Tell people the truth about the problem and the proper practices.

4. If that fails, exhort, inspire, and bargain with people to support the proper practices.

Steps 2, 3, and 4 can be summarized as find the truth, spread the truth, and magnify the truth. Classic Activism is thus a "more of the truth" process. It's an attractive process because it seems so logical and should work, because people are logical. It should work. This line of reasoning is so perpetually alluring that activism around the world has, ever since the first activist was born, relied on more of the truth as its central strategy.

The drawback is more of the truth only works on easy problems, where logical or emotional appeal will work because change resistance is low. If it doesn't work, Classic Activism is stuck. It has no idea of what else to do, because the process has only the four steps listed. So when the process fails on difficult problems, classic activists rachet up the process by somehow finding better truths (better solutions), by finding better ways to spread the truth (more articles, better articles, more social media communication, etc), and by finding better ways to inspire, exhort, and bargain.

But that has not worked on the sustainability problem. Why? Because it does nothing to resolve the root causes. A strategy of more of the truth has no concept of root causes. That line of thinking simply doesn't exist.

The fond hope of the people at Thwink.org is that you are an exception. If so:

An example of how "more of the truth" doesn't work

On the sustainability problem, the single largest example of how more of the truth doesn't work was The Limits to Growth books of 1972, 1994, and 2004. The three editions of the book all promoted the truth about how collapse was inevitable unless the world proactively reduced its environmental impact to a sustainable level soon. That message has been ignored.

In this 2012 article on Is It Too Late for Sustainable Development? Dennis Meadows summarizes the goal of The Limits to Growth project. Dennis was the manager of the project and one of the book's authors. Here's the project goal:

We wanted to understand the causes and consequences of physical growth on the planet over a 200-year time period, from 1900 up to 2100.

The interviewer asked: "According to the “standard run” or “business-as-usual” scenario, you predicted that we would overshoot the planet’s carrying capacity and collapse by mid-21st century. What do you mean by collapse?" Dennis replied:

In the world model, if you don’t make big changes soon—back in the ’70s or ’80s—then in the period from 2020 to 2050, population, industry, food and the other variables reach their peaks and then start to fall. That’s what we call collapse.

On the second page of the article the interviewer asked: "How optimistic were you about society charting a sustainable course?" Here is Dennis Meadows' reply, with bolding added. The quotes are his:

In 1972, and for some time after that, I was very optimistic. I was naively optimistic. I honestly believed in what I called the “doorstep model of implementation.” That is to say, you do a piece of work. You learn the “truth.” You lay it on the decision maker’s doorstep, and when he comes out in the morning, he finds it and changes his behavior. My whole team worked very hard. We wrote other books. We developed teaching materials. Many of us went into teaching in an effort to help produce the changes that we thought were going to come.

That's how Classic Activism works. It promotes more of the truth. Logically it should work. As Dennis explains "you do a piece of work." You publish it. You get the message out. People "learn the truth." You promote the truth at the highest levels of government. "You lay it on the decision maker’s doorstep, and when he comes out in the morning, he finds it and changes his behavior." At least that's what should happen.

But that's not what's happened. "The changes that we thought were going to come" never came. All that work was for nought.

Decision makers have listened. But they have not acted. As the article mentions, we are now at 50% ecological footprint overshoot. Collapse is so inevitable unless the world changes course.

Why isn't the world changing course?

Because more of the truth is a low leverage point. It does nothing to resolve root causes.

Proof that 100% of environmental activists and organizations are classic activists

Steps 2, 3, and 4 can be summarized as find the truth, promote the truth, and magnify the truth. Classic Activism’s central strategy is “more of the truth.”

To my knowledge, all what-to-do environmental literature falls into this process. Silent Spring was a superb mixture of steps 3 and 4, with a little bit of 2. Natural Capitalism, a book about how corporations can take the lead and create the “next industrial revolution” by switching to more environmentally sustainable technology, uses mostly 2 and 3. Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance is mostly 3. Environmental and nature magazines, such as Sierra, The Ecologist, Green Futures, and Audubon Magazine, are 3 and 4. Step 3 is also known as education on the facts or “appeal to logic,” while step 4 is the “appeal to emotion,” which attempts to magnify the truth with rhetoric and bargaining. The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change performed step 1 from an economic point of view and presented evidence that “the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs,” which is step 3. The actions reviewed were all proper practices. As discussed earlier, the common-pool resource literature sees its mission as finding the right proper coupling practices, which is step 2.

Environmental organizations also rely on steps 2, 3, or 4 to achieve their goals. Lawsuits to comply with existing environmental regulations would seem to fall outside of 2, 3, or 4. However, this is enforcement of the legal truth by telling judges about the truth of the facts involved. It is thus a form of 3. Lobbying is a mixture of 3 and 4. Scientific research into alternative energy, sustainable agriculture, recycling, ways to reduce population, and so forth is 2. Extremist actions such as sit-ins and blocking nuclear test sites are forms of 4. So are demonstrations, marches, and publicity stunts. Polls, such as how strongly people support a clean environment, are a form of 3. They are “the truth” why decision makers should enforce proper practices. Corporate social responsibility campaigns, since they play on psychological elements, are step 4.

Even the innovative sustainability solutions pioneered in developing countries, such as ecotourism, microfinance, acceleration of the demographic transition, direct marketing cooperatives for green products, and community based common-pool resource management, are a collection of better proper practices. Perfecting them is step 2. Education and assistance is step 3. Pleading and bargaining with developed nations, NGOs, and international agencies to support them and with developing countries to adopt them is step 4.

The Limits to Growth employed the general pattern of Classic Activism. The World3 model focused mostly on step 1: identify the problem. The 1972 first edition said little about the solution. But due to lack of solution progress, the second and third editions did. The 1992 second edition presented “a simple set of general guidelines for restructuring the world system toward sustainability,” such as “improve the signals… speed up response times… minimize the use of nonrenewable resources.” (p213-214) These are proper coupling practices, so the book was advocating step 2 and performing step 3. The authors acknowledged the presence of systemic change resistance: “Systems strongly resist changes in their information flows, especially in their rules and goals.” (p223) But when addressing how to deal with resistance, the authors turned to the old paradigm of Classic Activism: “In our search for ways to encourage the peaceful restructuring of a system that naturally resists its own transformation, we have tried many tools.” (p223) The tools were “visioning, networking, truth-telling, learning, and loving.” (p224) These are techniques used to implement Classic Activism steps 3 and 4. The 2004 third edition repeated these suggestions.

More recent modeling efforts continue to follow the four steps of Classic Activism. The Millennium Institute’s Threshold 21 sustainability model focuses on how a nation can better manage proper coupling. The IPCC assessment reports seek “the understanding of human induced climate change, potential impacts of climate change and options for mitigation and adaptation.” But this understanding, which is heavily model based, starts with the symptoms and stops at the same intermediate causes of the World3 model: the IPAT factors. Like the three editions of Limits to Growth, the four IPCC assessment reports have progressively tip toed into Classic Activism steps 3 and 4. The fourth report took a leap in section 4: Adaptation and Mitigation Options. This contained an extensive listing of existing proper practices and projections by sector on their effectiveness, which is step 3. Section 5, The Long-term Perspective, used “five reasons for concern” to emphasize that “Adaptation is necessary in the short and longer term to address impacts resulting from the warming that would occur even for the lowest stabilization scenarios assessed.” While expressed in the dry language of scientists, this is nevertheless the exhortation of step 4.

That's a mountain of proof that environmentalism relies exclusively on Classic Activism. It is the reason the movement is failing to solve the sustainability problem.

However, this message has proven to be extraordinarily difficult to get across due to paradigm change resistance. It seems that classic activists are like scientists. Once they use and believe in a particular paradigm for a long time, they can't conceive of any other way to look at their universe.

The alternative to more of the truth is more analysis. In Classic Activism the truth is really the intuitive truth. It's thus not really true because it's not a deep enough view of the problem to work. For that we must turn to analysis.

More of the Truth is the true memes node in the Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace simulation model. The reason More of the Truth fails on difficult problems is the opposition has an inherent advantage. This hidden advantage explains why Classic Activism is, unfortunately, doomed to failure on difficult problems like environmental sustainability.

Are you as concerned as we are about the rise of populust authoritarians like Donald Trump? Have you noticed that democracy is unable to solve important problems like climate change, war, and poverty? If so this film series is for you!

Why is democracy in crisis? One intermediate cause is a weakened Voter Feedback Loop. Powerful root cause forces are working to weaken the loop.

The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005. More people have contacted us about this easy to read paper and the related Dueling Loops videos than anything else on the site.

Do you every wonder why the sustainability problem is so impossibly hard to solve? It's because of the phenomenon of change resistance. The system itself, and not just individual social agents, is strongly resisting change. Why this is so, its root causes, and several potential solutions are presented.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.